Should the Waters Take Us: A Novel

by Stephanie Soileau

An epic literary debut that follows one family across four centuries, from France to Acadia to the bayous of Southern Louisiana—a poignant examination of belonging, place, and how individual, self-interested acts of moral compromise contribute to cycles of injustice and destruction.

    In the shifting bayous of coastal Louisiana, on a rapidly disappearing spit of land, generations of Acadians have kept their heads above water. When an offshore rig explodes and unleashes a catastrophic spill, the people of Pelerin Parish face a reckoning that tests the bonds of family and the survival of their way of life.
     As the toxic plume of oil advances across the Gulf, Boy Broussard, already living hand-to-mouth off land that isn’t his, finds himself raising a daughter he barely knows. His dying aunt, Rosa Terrebonne, tries to right the misdeeds of the past, yet finds herself thwarted by her husband, Jacot, a retired landman for Big Oil, who refuses to give up his claim to the land where Boy makes his living. Meanwhile the parish priest, Father Fabian, far from his home in the Niger Delta, lends his assistance to Boy’s all-but-motherless daughter, only to be met with suspicion and hostility from the insular community. When a powerful hurricane threatens to turn an already dire situation into a total cataclysm, this sharp-edged cast of characters collides in a thunderclap of resentment and violence. Throughout all of this, Soileau unfolds a sweeping tapestry of loss, resilience, and the fragile miracle of hope.
    Should the Waters Take Us reaches across four hundred years of history to illuminate the many epochs and peoples of this storied place. Soileau has crafted an emotionally explosive family saga, as well as a masterful literary crie de coeur about the ways in which moral compromise can eat away at the very fabric of the places we call home.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication July 14, 2026

About the author

Stephanie’s work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tin House, New Stories from the South, and other journals and anthologies, and has been supported by fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University, the Camargo Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught creative writing at the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of Southern Maine. Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, Stephanie now lives in Maine.

Reviews

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and how it takes place over time with different people and shows how the landscape and environment is affected. The characters were very well developed and the writing was fantastic. I loved the moral dilemmas and the family drama and overall the plot was beautiful and brilliant. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[sarah panic · Rating 5 out of 5]

“a voice for all the gros becs lovers.”

There was no doubt I would connect with this book in so many ways, being from around the exact place of its description. With my ancestors also being part of Le Grand D’erangement, and settling in marshes and bayous all along the coasts of Louisiana in Isle De Jean Charles, later an established part of Terrebonne Parish, this book struck a cord deep, deep within my soul.

In just the first few pages of the book, I knew I was not going to be disappointed with Soileau’s writing. The accuracy, the truth of who was on the lands of my peoples, I was covered in frissons. The voices that Soileau was giving to the culture, the times, the disappearing land, I was already searching out a way to thank her for the words she was putting down.

Starting out with talking about Chenière Disparue, which I knew immediately of what this story was alluding to, made me have another immediate connection. The story of Chenière Caminada and the 2,000 that were buried at sea is one many around here are aware of as its tales are far reaching. I have been fortunate enough to read a written work published in 1981 about the island and its people and to discover something similar talked about in such words is paying reverence in the most beautiful way.

From the way the deep chasms exist between families to the way those same ones seem to disappear when natural disasters come knocking. It is a way of survival, of community, simply, a way of life.

From discussing aspects of land loss, to subtle and not so subtle racism, to the political ineptitudes that keep us in this very position allowing the rich to profit from the land that we have tended century after century, the words within this book echo of the loss that crosses the south. It covers the loss of land, of soul, of life.

If it was not aspects of myself I saw in the characters Soileau created, it was people all around me that I saw within Boy or Rosa or Jamie. The bayou world is rich with personalities abound, but there are certain characteristics that are just perfectly Cajun, perfectly down the bayou that it cannot be replicated unless you know it, unless you live it. Soileau did just that within this book. I cannot stop raving about it. Should the Waters Take Us will be one that sticks with me for a long, long time.


Being down here, you know, I was a stickler for anything that stuck out that wasn’t ringing true to my roots. Stephanie did the best job in making everything so genuine that the only thing that stood out to me was the fact that one of the characters calls a snowball a sno-cone! We don’t do that down here, baby. That’s a snowball and that’s always going to be a snowball. We don’t take ourselves down to the sno-cone stand, we go to the snowball stand and this is a hill I am willing to die on. (My one and only complaint)

Thank you to Net Galley for the advance review of this copy and I am leaving this review completely voluntarily.

[Laura Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

My attention was first caught by the description, epic saga, when I saw the write up for Stephanie Soileau's debut novel, Should The Waters Take Us being published by Doubleday Books on July 14, 2026. I received an advanced reader's copy of the novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The word "epic" means to tell the stories of historic people or of a country's history. In Soileau's case, the adventures and deeds being told are of four centuries of people originating in France, then moving to Arcadia, and ending up in Louisianna in the bayous. The waters are paramount in their lives from the first voyage to the new world, to the livelihoods of living and surviving on the bayous for generations.

As in most dynamic tales, the adventures of the people jump from generation to generation, back and forth between eras and history unfolds and is retold to subsequent generations. We are introduced toeach generation learning from the successes and failures of the ancestors and sharing those lessons with their children. Some to be conquered, others to be relived over and over again as the land and the wilds are forever struggling against man and it's progress.

I enjoyed the book. I felt frustration with the characters when the hurricanes came and devastated the land over and over again throughout the centuries. When men took advantage of the poorer people, essentially stepping on the backs of some to rise above them. When children were at the mercy of the parents in the fight to simply survive.

I can't say that this was a book I felt joy to read, but I appreciate the story showing the reader what it means to persevere for the sake of life itself. I will give this book a rating of 4 stars, and invite others to read, , Should The Waters Take Us. It's important to realize that struggle is part of life and seeing others doggedness can motivate us to do likewise.